The Condition of Greece: Twenty Years After the Truman Doctrine

It is hard to talk about American intervention these days without talking about Vietnam. Yet Vietnam is not a typical case, in part because the Communists were and are so much stronger there than in any other country where Americans have been active during the past 20 years, in part because our response to Communism in Vietnam has been so radically unlimited. Perhaps this kind of response has been a possibility latent in every American intervention; perhaps we have been so successful precisely because we have always been willing to be so reckless. But our past interventions have been limited in character, even sophisticated, and it is worth exploring their consequences, if only to conclude that what is wrong with American policy in Vietnam is not merely its madness.

Just 20 years after President Truman initiated the policy of cold-war intervention, Greece has arrived at what many people regard as its culminating point: a right-wing military dictatorship. Not that this was Tru...